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Tag Archives: secretive

In which my hair falls off (1)

So, a thing recently happened. This thing caused a lot of my hair to fall off. I was the sole cause to this thing. For you see, sometimes I get this overwhelming urge to play with scissors in the middle of the night. I can often fight this urge off, as overwhelming as it is. But this time it was exacerbated by the fact that I recently acquired a set of CreaClip…clips. And in case it is still unclear, this thing involved me cutting my hair.

I actually don’t remember how I found out about the CreaClip. It seems that they advertise solely via infomercials. Now then, I actually like infomercials. I think they’re ridiculous and often hilarious. I just like to watch them for the hilarity of it all. I hardly ever buy anything because of an infomercial. Maybe because they’re just too ridiculous with their claims. This isn’t to say that all infomercial products are shams. We do own some infomercial products, except that we didn’t buy them through infomercials. We’ve acquired them from actual stores after they became really popular…due to their claims panning out, I guess.

Now for the CreaClip, I’ve never seen one of their infomercials on TV. I don’t actually watch much TV anymore and when I do, normally it’s stuff I’ve recorded so I can skip through commercials or I just have the TV on in the background for white noise while I work on projects. I don’t actually pay attention to what’s airing during that time. And actually, if I want white noise, I normally put on a podcast. So that might be part of it. Also, I especially don’t watch much TV when infomercials are generally aired.

I have seen CreaClip infomercials on YouTube though. Maybe that’s how I found out about them. Maybe I was YouTubing for ways to cut your own hair and their infomercials popped up. That seems reasonable. And that must have led me back to their site where I perused more YouTube videos of their product. And that must have also led me to look on Amazon to see if anyone else sold their product through Amazon because then there would be a chance for reviews. Also, it’s because I had no intention of paying 20$+ for some plastic with a level on it to get results I could do by just using hair ties, which I have in abundance. Which I also lose in abundance. But more so, which I break in abundance.

At any rate, I ended up finding a Hong Kong seller that was selling through Amazon what ended up being the original Japanese version of the CreaClip for only 5$ with free shipping. I decided that this was a marvelous deal and that I would be willing to part with 5$ in order to get some plastic with a level built into it. And thus, a set of CreaClips were acquired.

What I found: the plastic is of pretty good quality. I was half afeared that I would be getting something really flimsy (or nothing at all, seeing as how it was coming from HK and it was free shipping) that would break the moment you touched it. It’s not. It’s pretty durable. The level is solidly attached and won’t snap off when you’re moving it around. I’m actually kind of impressed with what I got for 5$. Not that I think that the material is worth much more than that. Plastic is cheap. But the idea and execution are quite good. Together, I’d think it’s worth the 20$ I see it priced at. I have also seen it priced at 39.99$. I do not think it’s worth that much. If you want one, I highly recommend that you continue shopping around if it’s being offered to you at 40$. I don’t necessarily recommend buying from sellers in HK that offer free shipping because there is a very high chance of you getting a knockoff (I got lucky) or a sense of disappointment when you realize your shipment is never going to arrive. If you can find it for a reasonable price locally, definitely go that route.

Erm…this post was originally going to show how all my hair fell off, but it’s getting kind of long and I’ve only talked about the background…and gave a semi-review of the CreaClip. I guess I’ll just have to break it up and you get to see what happens when I play with scissors and a CreaClip some other time. Huzzah!

I make! Lemur laundry bag edition

I bring your attention to this.

I trust that you remember it?  The giant circle eventually because a part of this.

Lemur!  I stuffed a comforter, a smaller blanket, and like five pillows in there and there was still some room at the top.

Yes, when I said it was that time of year again, I meant it was that time of year in which I make a lot of oversized laundry bags (two links…it also occurs to me that I’m missing a year’s worth of laundry bags) for the graduating high school seniors.  Remember, gifts should be useful…and embarrassing.

This year, I only had to make one and I decided to make a lemur.  Obviously.  It took a long time to figure out which animal to base this laundry bag on this time and then even longer to figure out how it should be posed.  I really wanted to do a sleeping lemur, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to make a 3D version of what I wanted and also, it kind of negated the reason as to why I chose the lemur (the big eyes).  So, I settled on a sitting lemur with its hands resting at its side.

Here are some detail shots.

I tried something new this time and appliquéd the face.  Except for the pupils.  That’s fabric dye.  Appliqué means that it was easier to make all the details of the face, but it is really stiff right there.  The rest of the pieces were done as I had before, which is how Tally made her patch here, only on a much larger scale.  All previous bags had all the details made that way and sometimes it’s kind of hard to control how exactly it turns out when you turn it inside out.

I really like how the hands and feet turned out.  It was actually the same pattern for both.  Lemurs have hands and feet that look quite similar.  I sewed the general outline of the hands/feet and made the individual digits by using black thread with a gray bobbin.  Really like how it turned out.  In case you didn’t catch it the first time.

I based the laundry bag on a ring tailed lemur, so of course it needed a nice, fuzzy, ringed tail.  I made the tail out of fleece so that it was fuzzy.

I believe I have perfected my bias tape technique.  Even the round on the bottom of the bag was wrinkle free.  Except I didn’t get a picture of it.  You’ll just have to trust me.

And finally the grommets.  I had originally planned on using silver grommets, except then I realized I only had two left.  I did have a new box of gold colored grommets, so I started using those.  Only to have each and every one I tried putting fail at the last instant.  They would all warp in weird ways right at the end and not actually grip the cloth.  I thought it was the anvil and setting tool I was using, as I had two sets, but both sets were producing the same results.  I ended up having to buy another set with another setting tool and anvil.  These ones worked just fine.  I have no idea what was going on with the other grommets I had.

Anyway, tada!  Lemur laundry bag!